Twenty years ago, as China entered the World Trade Organization and its economy accelerated into high gear, a sense of boundless possibility swept through the country’s business class. Wine, long associated with Europe’s cultural capital and rising middle-class aspiration, became one of the most alluring destinations for newly accumulated wealth.
In the vineyards of Bordeaux and the rolling hills of Australia, Chinese investors began to appear in growing numbers. Many arrived with genuine curiosity, others with grand ambitions. All were buoyed by the same assumption: China’s market was expanding so quickly that whatever they produced abroad could be absorbed effortlessly back home.
“Domestic business was strong. The companies themselves—and their clients—could consume all the wine,” was how many investors framed it at the time.
From 2012 onward, Chinese capital flowed steadily into Bordeaux. By conservative estimates, more than 200 châteaux were sold to Chinese owners, including estates acquired by figures as diverse as Jack Ma, actress Zhao Wei and Hong Kong tycoon Peter Kwok. For a while, it seemed like a new chapter in Bordeaux’s long history had begun.
It did not last.
What followed was a far more complicated reckoning. Some of the estates put up for sale were already struggling, either in vineyard quality or financial health. Running a winery across cultures, languages and labour systems proved far harder than anticipated. At the same time, China’s own wine market grew crowded and unforgiving.
After 2018, the market slipped into a prolonged downturn. Consumption weakened. Inventories piled up. Cash flow tightened. One by one, Chinese-owned wineries faltered. Many were sold quietly, often at a fraction of their purchase price.
The list of failed or distressed cases has grown steadily. Château Loudenne, acquired by baijiu giant Kweichow Moutai, was eventually auctioned following lawsuits over unpaid wages and worsening finances. Estates controlled by Haichang Group were confiscated by French authorities in 2024 amid investigations into money laundering and the misuse of Chinese government subsidies; several properties were left abandoned. Château Latour Laguens, the first Bordeaux estate bought by mainland Chinese capital, was sold at auction the same year for just €150,000, having once been acquired for roughly 40 million yuan by a Chinese real estate group.
Against this backdrop of retreat and retrenchment, the few Chinese-owned wineries still operating steadily stand out—not for their scale, but for their persistence.
One of them is Bel Eden.
A Different Kind of Bet
In 2010, an entrepreneur from Xuzhou walked through Bordeaux vineyards with a local broker, inspecting estates for sale. At the time, Li was a property developer; his company, Xuzhou Kaijia Property Co., Ltd., had developed multiple projects locally. But from 2010 onward, he decided to shift his focus to wine.
A year later, Bel Eden entered Bordeaux with the acquisition of two Médoc Crus Bourgeois – Château Barateau and Château Lafon – along with a bottling facility. Rather than treating the estates as vanity estates or short-term financial plays, Li structured them as a long-term operating business.
That distinction, modest at the time, would later prove decisive.
“We didn’t buy the winery for the label on the gate,” said Ding Youzhen, Bel Eden’s China sales director, who joined the company in its early days. “We were looking at the vineyards, the soil, the winemaking potential.”
Li, originally a property developer from Xuzhou, began exploring Bordeaux in 2010. Walking through vineyards with local brokers, he was surrounded by fellow Chinese buyers, each driven by different motives: status, diversification, speculation.
“But his thinking was very clear,” Ding recalled. “Wine was meant to be a pillar business, not a side project.”
Some estates looked picturesque but failed basic viticultural tests. “Forests behind the vines, fertile soil—it looked beautiful, but you don’t make great wine that way,” Ding said.
After a year of evaluation, Bel Eden committed more than €30 million to the acquisitions, among the largest investments made by a Chinese buyer at the time.
Li’s conviction extended beyond wine. As early as 2010, he had begun to doubt the sustainability of China’s property boom. By 2016, he had exited real estate entirely, concentrating his resources on wine.
Within a few years, the property market would unravel. Falling sales, tightening credit and developer bankruptcies—including the collapse of Evergrande—validated his timing.
When the Market Turned
For Bel Eden, as for most Chinese-owned wineries, the real test came after 2018.
At its peak, nearly two-thirds of the group’s production was sold in China. Annual revenue from the market once reached 100 million yuan (US$15 million). As consumption slowed, that figure fell sharply. Today, only about a third of Bel Eden’s wine is sold in China.
The two Crus Bourgeois estates, positioned as château wines, retained distribution in both France and China. The bottling plant did not.
“With a capacity of 20 million bottles a year, it simply became unsustainable,” Ding said. The facility was shut down, and the land redeveloped. Commercial brands are now bottled by third parties.
For many investors, such pressure marked the beginning of the end. For Bel Eden, it forced a recalibration.
Surviving the Downturn
The group’s response was neither dramatic nor passive.
In France, Bel Eden invested in building a domestic sales presence – supermarket placements, local promotions, sponsorships – to compensate for weaker Chinese demand.
In China, the changes were more structural. Anticipating a long downturn, the company introduced a partner-based system in 2018, eliminating base salaries in favour of higher profit sharing.
Some employees left. Those who remained were, in Ding’s words, “people who could actually sell wine.”
Marketing did not disappear, but it became sharply focused. Bel Eden launched what it called the “100–1,000 initiative”: 100 tasting tables a year, reaching 1,000 consumers, each event small, controlled, and explained in person by company staff. Advertising was maintained only in markets where sales momentum still existed.
It was not growth, but it was survival.
“Over the years,” Ding said, “our cumulative sales of Médoc Crus Bourgeois in China have been the highest among Chinese-owned estates.”
A Silver Age, Not a Golden One
Ding does not expect China’s wine market to return to its earlier exuberance. But he is convinced it has not reached its end.
He points to Japan as a reference. After its asset bubble burst in the early 1990s, wine imports collapsed before gradually recovering and nearly tripling by 2020. The recovery took time and discipline.
China, he believes, is following a similar path.
“The golden age won’t come back,” Ding said. “But there will be a silver age.”
During the boom years, he argued, too much low-quality wine was sold at inflated prices. Trust eroded. Consumers learned to avoid the category altogether.
“When people realise a wine isn’t worth what they paid, they remember,” he said.
Recovery, in his view, depends on restoring that trust through clear branding, fair pricing and wines that justify repeat purchase. The era of speculative mark-ups is over.
He also believes wine’s role in China’s business culture may yet evolve. Baijiu, dominant though it remains, carries its own constraints: high alcohol, heavy rituals, social pressure.
“Younger consumers prefer personalised drinking,” Ding said. “Wine fits that. As they grow into leadership roles, wine will naturally return to the business table.”
For now, Bel Eden continues quietly—neither expanding aggressively nor retreating.
In a landscape defined by exits, that alone sets it apart.
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